Finding Farley

When Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison (Being Caribou), along with their two-year old son Zev and indomitable dog Willow, set out to retrace the literary footsteps of Farley Mowat they meant it literally. Their 5000KM trip –trekking, sailing, portaging and paddling from the Prairies to the Maritimes – is captured in the documentary Finding Farley.

They paddle east from Calgary, towards the prairies (the geography of Born Naked and Owls in the Family) and then traverse the same paths that Farley took more than 60 years earlier, which became the foundation for Never Cry Wolf, and People of the Deer. The travelers also get an earful about the long-standing controversy that attends Farley’s work.

When the family reaches their final destination, Mowat's Nova Scotian summer home, it is, as Karsten says, “An affirmation of what the land and animals had already told us…Stories aren’t so much written or created as they are released, expressing what’s been there all along.”